“Additive manufacturing” refers to a process of making three-dimensional objects under computer control with material being added together (such as liquid molecules or powder grains being fused together). Unlike material removed from a stock in a machining process, additive manufacturing builds the three-dimensional object by successively adding material layer by layer.
The manufactured objects can be of almost any shape or geometry and typically are produced using digital model data from a computer file. There are different additive manufacturing technologies, such as stereolithography or fused deposit modeling.
The term “3D printing” originally referred to a process that deposits a binder material onto a powder bed with inkjet printer heads, layer by layer. More recently, the term is being used in popular vernacular to encompass a wider variety of additive manufacturing techniques. However, global technical standards use the term “additive manufacturing” in this broader sense, since the goal of additive manufacturing is to achieve mass-production, in contrast to 3D printing for rapid prototyping.
Additive manufacturing is an emerging technology that promises a host of improvements compared to conventional manufacturing, such as allowing production of more complex components and reducing manufacturing waste. However, additive manufacturing is vulnerable to flaws that are unique to the production process. These flaws result in uncertainty in the mechanical properties of components, such as porosity and local material property variations.